You might try searching/reading posts on this forum, or even the internet, about what interests you about the F-35. This is the age of 'self education', or at least a bit, try 'educated questions'. Try that for a 'stupid answer' to a 'stupid question'?

You might try searching/reading posts on this forum, or even the internet, about what interests you about the F-35. This is the age of 'self education', or at least a bit, try 'educated questions'. Try that for a 'stupid answer' to a 'stupid question'?

You might try searching/reading posts on this forum, or even the internet, about what interests you about the F-35. This is the age of 'self education', or at least a bit, try 'educated questions'. Try that for a 'stupid answer' to a 'stupid question'?

You might try searching/reading posts on this forum, or even the internet, about what interests you about the F-35. This is the age of 'self education', or at least a bit, try 'educated questions'. Try that for a 'stupid answer' to a 'stupid question'?

All i know about jets i searched myself from places like Wikipedia and i didnt get what is aesa radarr its on fancy words on Wikipedia so next time someone asks here question just answer if its not so painful for you guys...

Traditional radars, which were MSAs, had a dish and you scanned the sky by swivelling that radar left and right, up and down, while you shoot out pulses of energy and wait for a return signal. If you got a weak signal, you could swivel in a smaller area and hunt for where you got the strongest signal. That gave you the direction of the enemy.

With PESAs and AESAs, there's a flat face with hundreds of antennas sticking out. Each antenna is also like a speaker; if you tune the timing of each speaker (antenna), you can cause the sound waves (radar pulses) to interfere with each other and be amplified in a certain direction. Using this technique, PESAs and AESAs can fire very thin, powerful beams of radar energy at a target. However, they are limited to a field of view of 120 degrees (60 degrees left / right / up / down) unless you also make the radar physically gimbal (a no-go for stealth aircraft).

The difference between a PESA and AESA is that whereas in a PESA, you have 1 powerful signal generator that then pipes it's radar energy (microwaves) out to all of the antennas where a device tweaks the signal to allow for the aiming aiming of the radar pulse, AESAs have a signal generator on every antenna. The more antennas (also known as Transmit / Receive (T/R) modules on AESAs), the more powerful an AESA is.

AESAs are overall the most advanced type of radar and most capable. PESAs are good as well, but they get a lot of internal interference (noise) in the piping between the signal generator and the antennas, which reduces their gain (signal strength). PESAs can also only operate one on frequency at a time, meaning that they can't do certain fancy tricks that AESAs can, like splitting the radar into multiple smaller / weaker radars and broadcasting on a wide range of frequencies simultaneously (reducing the probability of enemy radar / radar warning receivers detecting the AESA's signal - they'll be more inclined to think it's just random background noise).

Traditional radars, which were MSAs, had a dish and you scanned the sky by swivelling that radar left and right, up and down, while you shoot out pulses of energy and wait for a return signal. If you got a weak signal, you could swivel in a smaller area and hunt for where you got the strongest signal. That gave you the direction of the enemy.

With PESAs and AESAs, there's a flat face with hundreds of antennas sticking out. Each antenna is also like a speaker; if you tune the timing of each speaker (antenna), you can cause the sound waves (radar pulses) to interfere with each other and be amplified in a certain direction. Using this technique, PESAs and AESAs can fire very thin, powerful beams of radar energy at a target. However, they are limited to a field of view of 120 degrees (60 degrees left / right / up / down) unless you also make the radar physically gimbal (a no-go for stealth aircraft).

The difference between a PESA and AESA is that whereas in a PESA, you have 1 powerful signal generator that then pipes it's radar energy (microwaves) out to all of the antennas where a device tweaks the signal to allow for the aiming aiming of the radar pulse, AESAs have a signal generator on every antenna. The more antennas (also known as Transmit / Receive (T/R) modules on AESAs), the more powerful an AESA is.

AESAs are overall the most advanced type of radar and most capable. PESAs are good as well, but they get a lot of internal interference (noise) in the piping between the signal generator and the antennas, which reduces their gain (signal strength). PESAs can also only operate one on frequency at a time, meaning that they can't do certain fancy tricks that AESAs can, like splitting the radar into multiple smaller / weaker radars and broadcasting on a wide range of frequencies simultaneously (reducing the probability of enemy radar / radar warning receivers detecting the AESA's signal - they'll be more inclined to think it's just random background noise).

Thanks now i know

I would only add one context perspective that is implied above. There is "knowing" and then there is understanding what that truly means in operations.

As noted AESA is both very frequency and beam agile. That can manifest itself as seeming to have many older type radars operating from the same footprint (nose space) and load (weight/power) doing many functions simultaneously in a given time window. That provides a large selection of those functions all happening at the same time (practically speaking) - ground/surface mapping/targeting,while air to air track/targeting, while jamming, with Low Probability of intercept(LPI) emissions... and perhaps while communicating all that info, also LPI, to the rest of the strike package, airborne, afloat and on land, and controlling weapons that those elements launched.

That type of mission power is more than simple specs on range etc. It opens a whole new world of mission operations, that fifth gen operators are just beginning to explore. The potential "mission power" could be orders of magnitude higher than other types.

New design approaches are not simply "40% better detection" or "twice the power and range" or "tracks three times more targets at a time" Often they completely upset the apple cart, totally changing "how things are done" for a mission. Modern AESA radars with increased computing power and new software fall into that category.

Dragon029 wrote:Here's a rough intro to AESAs (in the context of fighters):

That was an excellent summary of the different radar technologies in simple terms!

AESA has also the advantage of having much wider total bandwidth (frequency range) where it can operate. This makes them much more difficult to detect and much more resistant to electronic warfare. It also gives the advantage of giving much better resolution which is especially improtant in radar mapping and identification modes (like SAR/ISAR).

Another thing is that they are much more reliable and robust systems than either PESA or MSA radars by about an order of magnitude better. Makes them fail less and also require less maintenance.

One imporant thing is also the far superior adaptivity of AESA over other technologies. Basically the software and control hardware are the only limits for AESA technology. They can be used for ESM (listen to enemy RF signals), EW (jamming) and high speed communications besides being used as radars.

Basically AESA is the best technology for radar system and has by far the most growth potential in the future.

your cell phone system can be thought of as a radar and stuff, in what can be done too. out of all the 1,000's of calls that would be just noise if you heard it all at once..comes a very clear return signal from what you sent. It can position you and tell you where your caller is and lots of other stuff. there is also google, apps and instant messaging. lets not forget google earth

GaN will almost certainly make its way into the F-35 (unless an even better tech comes out / becomes mass produceable in the next decade or so). Increased output power may not seem ideal for a stealth aircraft, but it'll help with self-defensive EW and stand-off EW, and it might also allow the F-35 to boost the range of its MADL even further.

There is an possible benefit of GaN for the AESA radars of both the F-22, F-35, or any other AESA radar.

The reduced requirement of T&R modules in order to maintain the same radiating power means that the dish itself can be moved farther up into the nose. This allows the creation of "cheek" arrays on the sides of this new dish mount without having to do any changes to the body of the fighter.

Hmm -- I thought the F-35's nose was sealed because they didn't need to service the radar for the lifetime of the individual article? If so, would they have to cut open the nose to install a GaN radar?